A Word About Seed Prices
As you know most land restoration seed or land improvement seed is sold on a per pound basis. This is ok and a fair way to establish the cost of seed of a particular species. However, this criteria does not accurately or at least completely describe the actual value you are receiving for your dollars spent on seed. The reason being is that what you are actually buying is individual seeds not pounds and the number of seeds in a pound of seed is usually many, thousands even millions.
For example if a PLS (pure live seed) pound of Wyoming Big Sagebrush is sold for 50.00/ PLS one may well think that 50.00 is a lot of money for one pound of seed. But on further evaluation we find one PLS lb. of Wyoming Big Sagebrush has approximately 1,500,000 viable seeds in it. Therefore on a per seed basis each seed costs .0033 cents per seed or you can buy 303 seeds for a penny. This is amazing to me that 303 seeds that are hand harvested from the wild and all 303 are new potential sagebrush plants can be bought for one penny. That is a bargain to me and sounds very cheap.
Other examples are as follows:
| Species | Cost/PLS lb. | Approx. PLS Seeds/lb. | Number of seed that can be purchased for a penny |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sand Dropseed | 4.75 | 7,750,000 | 10,000 |
| Indian Ricegrass | 6.00 | 145,000 | 241 |
| Western Yarrow | 25.00 | 2,500,000 | 1,000 |
| Palmer Penstemon | 18.00 | 540,000 | 1,000 |
| Antelope Bitterbrush | 16.00 | 13,500 | 8.5 |
| Fourwing Saltbrush | 14.00 | 27,500 | 20 |
As you can see the number of seeds you can buy for a penny does vary quite a bit depending on the size of the seed and its cost per pound. However, when you look at the cost of this type of seed on a per seed basis it sure looks like a bargain to me whether you are only buying 5 seeds for a penny or 10,000 seeds for a penny each are a potential plant with a significant value in a land restoration or improvement project.
I hope you will think of this next time you think seed is expensive.